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July 19, 2015

Calendar Preview

The 2016 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Pre-order) is due out by the end of the month, but previews have been making their way onto the internet in conjunction with this past San Diego Comic Con where a limited number of the calendar was released early.

The first of the previews came from Random House itself, with an embedded look at the calendar that provided the first reveal of the scene from The Winds of Winter that would be among the artworks from French artist Magali Villeneuve, whose work graced our The World of Ice and Fire: a moment from one of the TWoW chapters GRRM released on his website last year.

Following that, io9 had an exclusive reveal of a number of the new pieces from Villeneuve—Tommen before the Iron Throne is particularly choice, not least because it captures the enormity of the throne as intended by Martin and as conceptualized by fellow French artist, Marc Simonetti. A little bird has told us that the artist for the 2017 calendar has already been selected, so it’s a matter of time before that’s revealed.

And for those who missed it, later in the year some more artwork will be coming by way of the official coloring book, which will feature a bevy of contributing artists (including the great John Howe).

A little under a month ago, we reported that Random House was going to publish George R.R. Martin’s Official A Game of Thrones Coloring Book, a work containing 45 original black-and-white illustrations with the intention that fans and devotees of the novels can color them in themselves. We now have the pleasure of revealing the cover, courtesy of Random House:

There’s quite an impressive list of artists involved, all of them following the brief of drawing inspiration from the A Song of Ice and Fire series (rather than from HBO’s Game of Thrones, the TV adaptation of said series). With GRRM presumably somewhat involved in the process, this means at least some of the images and scenes depicted are likely to hew relatively closely to how he himself imagines it… though in black-and-white, of course, rather than in color! Among involved artists are Yvonne Gilbert, John Howe, Tomislav Tomić, Adam Stower and Levi Pinfold.

For those in Europe, here’s some news regarding George R.R. Martin’s appearances starting this weekend, as well as our own!

First up, George will be in Hamburg for the Harbourfront Literature Festival, where he’ll be reading a chapter from The Winds of Winter, and likely to be answering questions as well. Despite early reports that this event would be livestreamed, this event is apparently not being streamed at all. It’s not impossible there’ll be an after-the-fact video from the event (as there have been with a number of GRRM’s public speaking events), but we’ve no information as yet whether that will be the case.

From there, George is off to Stockholm—and so are we! On Tuesday, the SF Bokhandeln bookstore has invited George to speak at the Royal Armoury. Although this event is sold-out, it’s worth noting that SF Bokhandeln’s three branches—Stockholm, Malmö, and our own Göteborg—will all offer livestreams to customers who could not attend the event. So far as we know, there will be no internet-wide stream, but again, there may be post-event videos. And for those in Stockholm, prior to the event—at 5PM—Linda and I will be at the bookshop to sign copies of The World of Ice and Fire, for those who want us defacing their copies!

After that, we’re all off to Åland for Archipelacon, the SF/F convention (sold out, alas!) where George is Guest of Honor, and his partner Parris is the Fan Guest of Honor. The convention has posted its schedule, and there’s a deal of interest for fans—we’ll share the highlights below:

Apparently, coloring books aimed not at 5-year-olds but at adults are actually a thing. Who knew? While the idea may sound a little odd to some, the Los Angeles Timesreports that Bantam (publishers of A Song of Ice and Fire, The World of Ice and Fire, and the forthcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, as well as the A Song of Ice and Fire calendars and other related works) has commissioned artists to create a book containing “45 original black and white illustrations, inspired by characters, scenes, locations and other iconic images” from A Song of Ice and Fire.

We’ve not yet had time to fully write up our wonderful visit to Spain to promote the Spanish-language release of The World of Ice and Fire by Gigamesh, but at least we thought we should share some of the interviews and photos from our events in Barcelona and Osuna.

In Barcelona, we had the great pleasure of speaking before a packed room of fans at Gigamesh’s amazing bookstore (easily one of the finest SF/F bookstores—with added attention to games and comics besides—we’ve ever visited, right up there with Sweden’s own SF Bokhandeln). This was live streamed, and you can see it below:

But before that happened, we managed an interview with the extremely amiable Javi Marcos of the Podcast de Hielo y Fuego. The interview was done on behalf of Spanish fan site Los Siete Reinos, who’ve released the first part of the interview in written form (in Spanish). But they’ve gone the extra mile. Not only have they released the original, English-language audio of the interview, but they’ve released a dubbed version as well! Javi “dubs” himself (hah), while his partner-in-podcast Carlos handles dubbing me and the fan we know as Lady Ashara (who gave us a lovely necklace and bracelet featuring the arms of our mutual favorite house, the Daynes of Starfall) handling dubbing Linda.

Fans curious about some of the details we cut from the world book due to space constraints may find this one particularly interesting, as we drop a few tidbits of information.

Our other visit was to Osuna, and though I’m not sure our presentation of the book or the separate interview we did for it have been released, Gigamesh has released some terrific photos of the visit we and their team had there. More about Osuna in particular later, when we’ve some more time!

All in all, it was a fantastic visit and a terrific opportunity to meet some of the world’s most dedicated A Song of Ice and Fire fans, and Linda and I are already trying to figure out when we’ll be able to make another visit to Spain.

The terrific Shire Post Mint, who’ve been creating A Song of Ice and Fire-related, George R.R. Martin-licensed coinage for years, have come up with another fun project after their last Kickstarter to create actual gold dragon coins proved a great success. This time, instead of aiming at the high-end collectors who go crazy for authenticity, Tom Maringer and company have launched a Kickstarter to make coins/tokens with a bit of A Game of Thrones flair, suitable a variety of games (but they’re particularly suited to Fantasy Flight Games’ Game of Thrones Living Card Game) and other houses.

Featuring a wide array of subjects—from ancient royal houses to modern great houses to foreign powers—the coins are a treat for any collector or gamer who can make use of them. The Kickstarter has just 9 days to go, and is still just shy of its goal, so we definitely recommend checking it out and giving it your consideration.

George R.R. Martin revealed on his Not a Blog that he had decided to go and update his book samples pages at his official site with a new The World of Ice and Fire sample… but it’s not quite a sample from the book: “The Westerlands” is in fact George’s original write up of Westerlands history, one of a number of such write-ups he did as his contribution for the book. Due to size constraints, Linda and I then worked with our editor Anne Groell to compress it down to fit the book.

Now, one note of caution: this is an unedited, unpublished text. In fact, purusing it, it’s a very close match for the original text George sent, before we turned it around with some comments pointing out some continuity issues. George is aware of them and will doubtless incorporate them in the future if he decides to publish it, but in any case there are differences between the two texts because we incorporated those necessary changes and fixes into TWoIaF. Some have asked us if we can at least consider all details not contradicting the books and TWoIaF as “canon”, but I’d again underline the fact that this isn’t really a published text. Until it’s in a fixed format—as in, published in a book or an anthology—it’s not canonical, as all unpublished details are entirely subject to change at George’s whim. I’d guess very little of it will change if George did decide to publish it, beyond those things already fixed for The World of Ice and Fire, but that’s where it stands.

In January, nominations opened for the 2015 Hugo Awards, which will be presented at the Worldcon in Washington, Sasquan. The ballots will close on March 10th, so if you’ve yet to nominate but are eligible to do so, best get cracking. Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading List is always a good place to start reviewing some of the literature from last year… but we’ll focus on things connected to GRRM, one way or the other:

George is again each eligible this year for Editor- Short Fiction, thanks to Rogues, and co-editor Gardner Dozois is eligible several times over due to other collections and anthologies he’s edited in the previous year. And speaking of Rogues, all the stories therein are individually eligible in their respective categories. The Locus list linked above notes several of them, by writers such as Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, and Scott Lynch, but it’s worth noting that Martin’s novelette “The Rogue Prince” is also eligible. (And as to Best Editor - Long Form, Jane Johnson of HarperCollins Voyager and Anne Groell of Random House should be perennial nominees.)

Also eligible, of course, would be Game of Thrones in the Dramatic Presentation - Short Form category; we’d recommend nominating “The Watchers on the Wall”, the spectacular Neil Marshall-directed penultimate episode, and GRRM’s own contribution, “The Lion and the Rose”.

Thanks to a Facebook update by artist Magali Villeneuve—one of the many artists contributed beautiful artwork to The World of Ice and Fire—we see that Random House has released some official information (including a cover image) regarding the 2016 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Pre-order: Amazon.com). Due for release on July 28th, there’s one particularly interesting detail about her work on the calendar:

And, as a special treat, one of Villeneuve’s twelve gorgeous, dynamic paintings depicts a scene from The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth novel in A Song of Ice and Fire.

That should be quite interesting, especially if it were to be from a chapter that no one has gotten a glimpse of yet.

According to Variety, it looks like more George R.R. Martin work is going to hit the silver screen. According to the report, In the Lost Lands will go into production in the fourth quarter of this year and may potentially star Milla Jovovich, who is said to be in talks. The film’s story appears to be based on three of Martin’s short stories: the eponymous “In the Lost Lands”, featuring a sorceress called Gray Alys (the role Jovovich will prospectively play); “The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr” (available online at Fantasy Magazine); and a personal favorite of mine, “Bitterblooms”, one of a number of GRRM’s stories inspired by songs (in this case, Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”).

All three share certain themes—there’s a deep sense of melancholy in all three, and love and betrayal runs through them all—but are otherwise unconnected, so it does raise the question as to whether the film will rework them as being part of a single narrative (which seems to be what’s implied), or whether it will instead be more of an anthology film with some sort of bridging material connecting them together. Some details can be found at Constantine Werner’s page for Rusalka Films, including some character designs and “concept designs” (actually more like design inspirations).

Although the A Game of Thrones Guide app has been around for just about as long as the iOS version, A World of Ice and Fire, it has not quite received all the features that the iOS version had… until now, that is, as Random House is happy to release an updated, rebuilt app on the US Google Play store. Included in this update are the following:

A brand new design for Android.

You can now resize type on all profile and excerpt screens.

Four brand new categories with 50+ new profiles: Religions, Groups, Creatures, and Things.

All of the officially released excerpts from The Winds of Winter and The World of Ice and Fire book.

Unfortunately, at least for the time being, the Android app is only available in the U.S.

Here’s a pleasant surprise: the Inn at the Crossroads has announced that they’ve partnered with Random House to publish From the Sands of Dorne: A Feast of Ice and Fire Companion Cookbook (Amazon US), an e-book expansion to the original A Feast of Ice and Fire (Amazon US, Amazon UK) cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer. This book, authored by Monroe-Cassel alone, will focus on cuisine inspired by Dorne. Random House has provided a list of the included recipies:

The A World of Ice and Fire app (as it’s called on iTunes; it’s called the A Game of Thrones Guide on Android, although we’re uncertain if the update has reached that platform yet) has been updated with an excerpt from the forthcoming The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon USAmazon UK). The excerpt is drawn from the section of the book devoted to the ancient history of the Vale up to the point in which the conflict between the Andals and the First Men culminated in the Battle of Seven Stars, where the last First Man king fell and the Arryns came to rule the Kingdom of Mountain and Vale.

The app is free to download, and with the latest update includes all the offiically released excerpts from The Winds of Winter, as well as the World of Ice and Fire excerpt.

Just 29 days to go before the publication of The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), and we admit, we’re getting excited as well by the flurry of activity that’ll follow on the forum and elsewhere concerning all the new setting information (and a few little details relevant to various mysteries in A Song of Ice and Fire).

Contrary to what Amazon UK says at the moment, by the by, it will be out on October 28th in the UK—HarperCollins Voyager is sorting that error out with Amazon. We can say that a number of publishers around the world will be bringing out translated editions, including our native Sweden, as well as Brazil, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Russia, and more—but those will be released at various points in time as they complete their translations and print their editions. In total, a dozen countries will be publishing it so far, with negotiations ongoing in a number of others.

Not really sure what The World of Ice and Fire is? Earlier this year, Linda and I did a video about it that can help with that:

Back in March, Linda and I were invited to the grand opening of the Power Games (Maktspel) exhibit in Stockholm’s Royal Armory, featuring a replica of the Iron Throne as well as numerous costumes from Game of Thrones alongside with historical costumes from Sweden’s royal history as well as costumes from the award-winning Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It was a fine occasion, and the quality of the exhibit itself was exceptional.

Now, we’ve been invited back on October 4th for a special event built around the exhibit. Beginning at 11AM, with a chance to have a photo taken by a professional photographer as attendees sit on the Iron Throne, the event will include guided tours of the exhibit, as well as a couple of seminars which begin at 3:00PM. One will focus on on the burgeoning popularity of fantasy, featuring the founder of Sweden’s excellent SF Bokhandlen SF/F bookstore… and the other will be all about The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order:US, UK), Westeros.org, and history in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, featuring Linda andme as well as genre experts from SF Bokhandlen.

Tickets for the seminars can be booked by mailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or calling 08-402 30 30 (Monday-Friday between 9-12). The seminar ticket cost is 100 kr, including entry to the museum, and our panel, at least, will be in English.